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O’Neill also made an ene­my of one of the Senate’s most pow­er­ful Democ­rats,
Appro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee Chair­man Robert Byrd of West Vir­ginia. Clear­ly
aggra­vat­ed when Byrd accused him of being out of touch with aver­age Amer­i­cans,
O’Neill shot back that he had been born “in a house with­out water or
elec­tric­i­ty. So I don’t cede to you the high moral ground of not know­ing what
life is like in a ditch.” Byrd’s many ene­mies enjoyed the exchange, but O’Neill
paid a price.

On extract­ing a sheared-off 1/4″ pipe nip­ple: Good luck find­ing a 1/4″ NPT
inter­nal pipe wrench in town. Or any­one who knows what one is, for that mat­ter.
Instead, tap the trapped pipe with a 3/8″-16 tap. Coat the threads of a 3/8″
bolt with cyano­acry­late or Loc­tite, and wrench it in snug­ly. Drink 1-2 beers.
The bond has now hard­ened; remov­ing bolt with wrench will bring the bro­ken pipe
nip­ple with it.

“If the Nation­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­ter were as stingy with its infor­ma­tion, there
would be thou­sands dead. Ari has the uncan­ny abil­i­ty to suck infor­ma­tion out of
a room.”Senior CBS News White House cor­re­spon­dent John Roberts,
speak­ing of White House Press Sec­re­tary Ari Fleis­ch­er, as quot­ed in
The New
York Times, Octo­ber 14, 2002.